Although I haven't been on the forum in a while – due to no longer having a computer – I felt that this question was interesting enough to research and found temporary alternative means of accessing the Internet. While at the first Seder a thought occurred to my mind. As we all know, there were ten plagues suffered by the Egyptians, one of them being the plague of blood.

Now the question that occurred to me is this:

If we were to do a DNA analysis of the blood which afflicted the Egyptians what would the structure of the blood be? Would the content of the blood prove to be animal, human, or a blood type unknown to this world?

Although I do not have a source for this, my thought is that perhaps because the Egyptians murdered Jewish children by water, or regarding things having to do with water, (by throwing Jewish male babies into the Nile and Pharaoh bathing in the Jewish children's blood) – PERHAPS, PERHAPS, as a Midah K'neged Midah – the Jewish children's blood that was taken from them by the Egyptians rose up against the Egyptians in the form of water turned to blood. As water is a life giving force, the blood that was taken away from the Jewish people by means of water, returned to the Egyptians' water by means of transforming into blood.

I think this depends on whether we accept the blood story literally. Scientists attempted to explain the exodus story, including the ten plagues, via the Santorini eruption. According to them, not only did it generate the plagues, but acted to draw back the water in the Sea of Reeds (Yam Suf) when the Jews were passing through Sinai.

Blood is mentioned alot in the Torah. Maybe second to G-d. So I think it should be taken both literally and symbolically.

It could have been O negative blood type since that is the Universal Donor.(Just a joke)

But who is to say who's blood is redder than whose?

Torah allows us to visualize infants drowning in the Nile. But should we go as far as to imagining their bodies, may they rest in peace, disintegrating into a bloody mess? I didn't until you mentioned it. Certainly, if anyone had the right to rise up against Pharoah and the egyptians it would have been those children. Good point.

Also, since Moshe was an adult, didn't the drownings occur years before, or did they continue up until that time?

Whatever caused it, it was a supernatural occurance DNA or not.

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Torah allows us to visualize infants drowning in the Nile. But should we go as far as to imagining their bodies, may they rest in peace, disintegrating into a bloody mess?

One of the saddest images is the explanation of how the evil Pharoah had a skin affliction and to treat it he had Jewish babies murdered and captured their blood for him to bathe within ;-(

One hagaddah we have explains this and other horrific scenes quite vividly, but this story in particular always gets to me.

Its perhaps right up there with how my Rosh Yeshiva nearly 10 years ago explained how one particular scene from Tisha B'Av Kinnos was fulfilled when at a certain rock the evil nazi murderers killed numerous Jewish babies by smashing their heads against this particular rock.

These horrific stories (of which we Jews have no shortage) and a tradition to remember well, I think is a strong reason why Nefesh.org has a reason for being -- our psyche is probably quite hard to understand by gentile norms.

One can speculate about a lot of things, but in the absence of a source (afterall we have thousands and thousands of pages of sources), it seems a rather futile exercise.

Since we try to explain things as simply as possible and relate it to things we understand, the logical explanation would be something similar to the red waves of blood we have in our own time due to red algae which kill all the fish.

Aryeh Shore

I just heard in a shiur that the blood which was that first makkah, was dam niddah from all of the Yiddishe women.

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Originally posted by Rivkaleah:
I just heard in a shiur that the blood which was that first makkah, was dam niddah from all of the Yiddishe women.

Is there a source for that?

I'm sorry, I don't know the source - but the next time I see the person who spoke, I'll ask.